Tuesday, January 08, 2013

Helping my son revise for a maths test .. most of the questions seemed a bit dull and unlikely to catch a boy's imagination, so I made this one up for him.A crazy sniper shoots a high velocity bullet vertically upwards. The muzzle exit velocity was previously measured on a firing range, using an accurate timing device, to be 980m/s.

Use the simple equations of motion (known as the SUVAT Equations .. available on thickipedia here) to calculateA) the time the bullet takes to reach the top of its trajectoryB) how high it goesC) bonus mark : could the gun have shot a hole through the Red Bull Stratos balloon just before Felix jumped?